Mediterranean Mezze Platter

Perfect appetizer. Light, healthy, colorful and tasteful. You can't go wrong with mezze or meze, your guests will be super pleased.

Although I am a big fan of Serbian traditional meze as well, Middle Eastern mezze is still my favorite. I tried it for the first time in a Lebanese restaurant and I still go there to get good mezze.

Traditional mezze includes hummus, babaghanoush, tabbouleh, olives, stuffed grape leaves... In reality, you can create platter with anything you have in your fridge or pantry at that moment.

Always serve flat bread with mezze. I love homemade pita bread that is so much better the one from the supermarket.

This is how I recently made my mezze platter:

Upper row

Labneh - faboulous cream cheese from Middle East. It is easy to make, you need only milk and Greek yogurt. Find recipe here.

Tabbouleh salad - this is my version with couscous, but you can always use bulgur.

Hummus - to be honest, I never made it because nowadays you can find really good one in every supermarket.

Middle row

Olives - black Kalamata is always my favorite.

Onion dip with yogurt, feta cheese and oregano - this is not traditional thing but you should try it. Very refreshing and flavorful dish.

Tapenade - you can find so many recipes online or you can buy it.

Lower row

Ajvar - spread or dip made of roasted red peppers and eggplant with garlic. Everyone loves it, for my American friends that is the best Serbian stuff they've ever tried.

Banana peppers rings - some sourness from pickled vegetable, plus nice color.

And babaghanoush... extraordinaire dip that I make pretty often. Below is the recipe.

Babaghanoush

You need:

1 large eggplant

1 clove of garlic, minced

handful fresh parsley, chopped

handful fresh mint, chopped

1/4 cup tahini

1-2  tablespoons lemon juice

Salt and black pepper

Some olive oil

Optional

2 tablespoons of ajvar

or 2 tablespoons of chopped Kalamata olives

Steps:

Broil or bake whole eggplant in the oven, on upper shelf for about 30-60 minutes, until soft and collapsed. Then let it cool down. Remove the skin and mash the pulp with fork. You can remove seeds if you like. Add minced garlic, tahini, chopped parsley and mint, lemon juice, salt and black pepper. I found that adding Kalamata olives or ajvar will give some extra acidity that babaghanoush needs (at least for my taste). Mix everything together and place in a serving dish. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

And, check out this great online food magazine Mezze, where you can find my recipes and articles.